Indie | Immunity Contest

By Fraser McMillan

Muse Games, purveyors of browser-based multiplayer goodness, have been running a development competition in which they challenged bedroom coders to prototype and submit a concept using the now free Unity engine.

The winner will receive 10 thousand pounds with which to transform their rough demo into into a fully-fledged game, which, when finished, will be distributed by those lovely people at Muse. Voting is open to the public, and though it was supposed to be over by now, it appears to remain operational for the moment.

All of the prototypes can be played here, though grab the Unity player if you haven’t already. Don’t worry, it takes a total of about fifteen seconds to download and install, then you’re ready to go. Among the games showcased are: Reclamation of Threntok, a typical roguelike; Mole, a slightly perplexing, clearly iPhone-oriented mish-mash of Dig Dug and Mr. Driller; Catapult for Hire, an entertaining distraction about knocking things over; some run-of-the-mill ball-rollers; a collaborative potion-making Mario Party style Wizard-sim; a game in which you play a dog; a gloriously unhinged BattleZone-alike featuring pickles; a puzzle driving game; a tank-based racer; a post-apocalyptic exploration curio starring a fat man… you get the idea. There are many more aside, but the handful below are my pick of the bunch. Remember, this is based on the strength of the concpt and how its fundamentals are displayed in the demo, rather than the execution of the prototype itself.

//Destroy the Level
This is a neat subversion of what we expect from side-scrolling shooters. And no, it’s nothing like Retro/Grade. The title is fairly self-explanatory, but the game itself is even more interesting than that sounds. Putting Unity’s excellent physics acceleration to good use, it allows the player to fling bits of the scenery all over the place. Trees are the first obstacle, with bricks, missiles, a tower, more bricks, more missiles and… well, I didn’t get any further [addendum: while procrastinating from writing I played more and beat the sole level, turns out I just had to pass that second bunch of missiles]. There’s a bit of a problem here, because the game itself is incredibly addictive, but hard like a giant diamond spike in your face. Our humble protagonist, in this case a floating brain, flies along at quite a rate, giving you very little time to react to oncoming hazards as you grasp desperately to prevent bits and bobs you’d fired into the sky not ten seconds ago hit you square in the mushy noggin. That said, it’s highly accomplished for a rough prototype, and though less precise, it possesses a similar elusive quality to the one that made Trials 2 so horribly, gruesomely time-consuming. An excellent concept that appears to be a perfect fit for the engine.

//Ariadne’s Thread
There’s dungeon crawlers, then there’s dungeon crawlers. Dungeon crawlers are typically role playing games, laden with stats, weapons and loot, often sporting a top down viewpoint. Ostensibly, Ariadne’s Thread is a dungeon crawler; you take control of a character from above and guide him and his trusty blade through a dingy series of tunnels. This is different, though. It’s based on Greek mythology, so the dungeon in question happens to be a labyrinth. As in, the Labyrinth, you know, the one with the Minotaur (Bowie not included). The walls are engraved with depictions of the nasty brute alongside a map that’s really too small to be helpful, but that’s perhaps the point. The central concept is darkness. Sure, we’ve seen it in games before, but the only way to avoid becoming enveloped in omnipresent and absolute blackness is regularly topping up the torch’s fuel, which, when you’re wandering around with only a trail of string and a depleting flame to guide you whilst being pursued by a creature who would love nothing more than to rip out your spine and use it as a toothpick, is harder than it sounds. Even with the atrocious demo controls, text overlays in lieu of better sound and visual effects and simplistic looks, claustrophobia takes hold, and fear of the roaming beast is exacerbated hugely by the unwavering dark. The idea shows a lot of promise, and properly fleshed out could be something very special indeed.

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